March came in like a lamb....

We made it through December, January, and February! March came in like a lamb, no snow falling, a windy, but sunny day. So far today, I tried to pay my car payment, but the website is down. I fixed the Flor tiles that needed new tapes, let dogs in and out several times and kept the home fires burning. We have had some trouble with Herman and Scout spraying in the house, so I decided to make some belly bands for them. Scout’s is brown flowered corduroy and Herman’s is a red cotton print. I had some leftover Velcro, flannel pads and the fabric, so this project was free! Scout wasn’t too sure about his, however now he is now laying calmly on the chair, Herman however has been running all over the house in protest. The problem with dachshunds is they are shaped like a barrel so anything wrapped around them will slide eventually. Herman farts when he is stressed, so this has been fun.


I ordered my chickens yesterday. They will be here the first week of April. I ordered an assortment of layers since I don’t know much about chickens yet. We will be buying replacements every year, so hopefully I will have a favorite breed next year when we order new chickens.

We have decided to buy pigs this spring for meat. I found a great book called “Living With Pigs”, it had a ton of information on getting started as well as explaining the benefits of raising pigs. They like to forage so it will be a great way to clear some of the back land for corn next year. I still want a cow, but we need to build a shelter for it, and probably improve the pasture, so getting one may not be practical this year.

This winter has been an experience. I have felt secluded at times, and although I was concerned about falling into depression, I really haven’t. Skills I have gained are bread baking, making very tasty though inexpensive meals, and learning to bounce back when things don’t go as expected. Last week, a stack of my fiesta dishes fell off the shelf. They are pretty heavy, and it was my fault for overloading the shelf. I admit I did cry over broken dishes. It took me quite awhile to accumulate them, and with money being tight, it will be awhile before I get more to replace them, but they are just dishes and so I am over it. I rearranged the shelves and found space for some other things I had forgotten, like my food processor.

I am looking forward to warmer weather, but with over three feet of snow, and more expected tomorrow, it will probably be awhile before we see some.

Winter 2011 - halfway?

Wow! It has been over a month since I have written to this blog. Winter has been a little harder than I would have imagined. Gas prices here have been high, $ 3.25 - $3.29 a gallon. This makes things more difficult because we have a Jeep Liberty Renegade, which gets about fifteen miles per gallon, and we live about seventeen miles from either town. That is over a gallon each way. In St. Louis, you'd just go out to the grocery, never really considered all the factors involved since there were tons of stores just a half mile away. Now, if you just need milk, one has to think " do I really want to spend over ten dollars just to buy milk?" This leads to less trips to "town", Kevin tends to pick up things from the grocery when he goes to town to substitute teach. I don't really mind most of the time, but sometimes when he comes home from school, and if he has worked 2-3 times that week, I depend on him more for social interaction. We have both always had our own lives, so sometimes the dependency is hard for both of us. He'll come home, eat dinner and fall asleep early, and sometimes I resent the social isolation. I am thinking of maybe getting a job, and have put in a few applications.
I went to Florida from January 14th - 25th. It was fun spending time with daughter Sarah and her family. We went to Miami, and also to a local beach, it was in the high 70's to low 80's and very pleasant. I loved getting to know my youngest grandson Elliott, as well as having fun with my two older grandchildren, Tristen and Claudia. It was a very nice break, I came home to -14 temperatures and stepped into a snowbank when getting out of the car. Welcome home. It was nice to be in my home again though, I missed Kevin and the pups.
Last night, we had dinner with some friends and neighbors, it was nice to see people, and I realize that we all have similar feelings at times. We have a small group who get together once a month or so, it is good to know these people are around, and that if I really wanted to, I could go visit. I have a Scion, which is not really a Winter car. We have a wedding reception to go to in a couple of weeks, and we did get out to the movie theater Thursday nite. We combined, grocery store, dinner out at the local diner, and a movie at the local theater. It was nice, and our movie theater has $3.50 seats on Thursday night. We will likely do this once a month or so.
I am still pretty happy with my decision to live in the country. I have planned my garden and have been reading books on raising animals. I decided that we are going to start with chickens, shoals to raise for pork, a cow or goats for dairy and a very large vegetable garden. We will likely start with the chickens maybe next month as it takes them about six months to start laying. My friend Deb says they raise their chicks in a plastic bin on the kitchen table. I think we will do the same, but maybe in the spare bedroom. We may buy a few already laying chickens in the Spring from the Amish just to have eggs sooner. I have debated the cow vs. goats over and over, I would like a cow, so it may be awhile before we do dairy.
We have a few more weeks or a couple more months of Winter, so I am sure our plans will eventually come together. I am proud of both of us for developing the skills we need to make it this far.

End of the year 2010

We had a really nice Christmas this year, some of our new friends brought us some gifts and another plowed our driveway. Such a different experience from life in the city. Jay came over for the day on Christmas, he enjoyed all of his gifts and we had a really nice dinner. We stopped in town for dessert when we took Jay back to his house in Patten. Sarah and family were on a cruise and surprised us by calling in the morning when they were docked in Key West, Kevin also got a call from his son Frank. It was overall a really good, relaxing day.

The week has been good, Kevin and I finished up a few projects around the house. Most of the week has just been hanging out together. We received a bunch of seed catalogs in the mail and have been planning our Spring garden. After I return from visiting Sarah and family in Florida, we are going to draw a map of the garden area, and will figure out exactly what to plant. One of the gardens is going to be just a vegetable garden, the other will be a kitchen garden, mostly herbs.

It is just the two of us now, which is a little strange, since the beginning of our marriage, we have had children and or grandchildren living with us. The boys have had many issues even into their adult lives that have worried us. Now that there is a bit of distance between us, we can focus on our own happiness.

As usual, I will be setting goals for the new year, not making resolutions. This year I want to develop the skills I need to raise chickens and a couple of more farm animals by taking classes through the county extension. I also am going to grow and can most of our produce. I will also be spending more time sewing and doing the crafts that I haven't had time to do in the past. Most of all I would like to have more time to develop closer relationships with my friends and extended family.

What a month!

This has been a very busy month. Jason moved into his shared house a week ago. He has been enjoying a very busy and active lifestyle. His room is nice, freshly painted with a new floor and a Red Sox border. We spent time with him Monday getting his room set up, hanging his tv on the wall, and helping him figure out how to use the remote. We speak twice daily, and he seems really happy.

We  came home to a foot and a half of water in the basement on Monday. The pump was clogged and had failed. Kevin got it started again after cleaning it and reinstalling it in the sump. He had to walk through very icy water. Many of the local roads were washed out due to flooding and some of the men who work in the woods were unable to work for a few days. We are on the main road so we were pretty much unaffected except for the basement flooding.

We bought a Christmas tree at a local stand. great bargain at $22.00. It is really pretty set up and the whole house smells of pine. We bought a new washer and dryer as well as a deep freeze with Kevin's bonus money. We have decided for Christmas this year we were just doing stocking stuffers. We have of course bought presents for Jason and the grand kids. Sarah and family are on a cruise for the holidays so they opened their gifts last night. We talked to Tristen and Claudia on the phone. They seemed excited about the cruise and really liked their gifts. Jason will be home on Christmas day, so we will have a roast beef dinner and eggnog. He asked for bread pudding as dessert. I have never made it before but I found a good recipe.

It has been a year since we first bought the house here in Amity. We have both learned so much in that time. Kevin has learned to fix things when they break. It is amazing sometimes how resourceful he has become. He has repaired the pump, ran a new outlet for the dryer, we have unstopped drains, thawed frozen pipes, and a multitude of little and not so little things that come up. We have far less money than we did in St. Louis, but we have ample time, and really don't need a lot. I have learned to cook healthy and low cost meals. It will be much better when we are raising our own meat and produce. Kevin has been substitute teaching, which helps supplement Kevin's pension. Life is good overall, we have grown closer through this experience which is a really good thing.

Snow Day

Here is a photo of the house and outbuildings taken from the back looking over the slope. We took the dogs out to walk around the property this afternoon.  Herman, Lady Bug, and Scout loved being outside, running, burrowing, knee high in the snow. It was cute watching them. Heidi grudgingly walked along, but made a quick beeline to the house when I mentioned going in about a half hour later.

Lady, Scout and Heidi

Herman

Thanksgiving was good, we had dinner at the home of our friends and neighbors Larry, Deb and Amanda. Good food and good company! Kevin had most of the week off from school, and besides the daily work, we have kind of been relaxing and spending time together. Thanksgiving night, we spoke with Sarah and each of the grand kids, also heard from Marcus in South Korea, Jay and Adam were here with us. Kevin was a little disappointed that neither of his biological kids called, but we have come to accept that some are more family orientated than others. I wonder what will be left of the traditional holidays when this generation of non committed young people grow up. If you don't aspire to have a family is there really a point to family holidays. Kind of sad in a way, but enough on that topic.

We still haven't banked the house, and we are suffering with drafts on the floors. I crabbily face mornings running to the bathroom with bare feet. I really need to pay more attention to the placement of my slippers. Kevin hopes to get the plastic on the foundation tomorrow. We are also going to get the rest of the upstairs windows tomorrow too. The snow is really pretty and Adam went out hunting in it yesterday. Today is the last day of deer season, but no deers have even been spotted and the guys never made it to Solon. It's probably a good thing since we don't have a deep freeze yet, maybe next year. Adam is still hoping to get a snowshoe hare.

We finally got a dryer yesterday and I was very excited until we plugged it in only to realize that the 220 outlet wasn't wired into the box. We had originally planned to get a gas dryer, but Larry had this one for sale cheap. Kevin made a call to our electrician John and he will be out next week. It is a little disappointing, also we got a washer with the dryer, but the pump appears not to be working so I will have to deal with our old, ugly but functional machine for awhile longer. Oh well, I guess I wouldn't appreciate the good things if everything worked smoothly.

Jay is starting to get stressed about Christmas, Thanksgiving annoyed him a bit. We usually just eat at home and I guess he was expecting leftovers and was pretty annoyed when we didn't cook. The problem is that Jay can't express his expectations and if we don't anticipate them in advance he usually tantrums to some extent. It wasn't bad, but he is still kind of annoyed, I also fell short for his Black Friday plans. I will definitely cook on Christmas, fill the stockings, bake cookies, he'll get it all!

I went to town today, didn't shop much, got a couple of small things for Tristen. I am getting Elliott a Hallmark recordable book, and since we have no Hallmark stores locally, I will have to order it online. Christmas isn't going to be full of material things, but then again, we don't ever really go overboard. This year we plan to go even less so. I checked into knitting classes while in town, Carol at the yarn shop charges five dollars for three hours of lessons. I begin this week and my first project is going to be a hat. I also found a great new designer retail shop bought a really nice pair of jeans and another sweater for eleven dollars. It was nice getting out of the house for a couple of hours.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This has been an amazing year! Just a year ago, Kevin and I made the decision to buy this house. We were both working full time jobs, opposite shifts but we had Sundays off together. It's crazy looking at our life now, and thinking of how far we have come in just one year. A year ago, I never really thought about money, when I went grocery shopping, I tossed in just about everything. I never made it through a whole week without having to buy something else to make a simple meal. Truthfully, I rarely cooked. I purchased easy to prepare foods for Kevin and Jay, ate the worst junk during my half hour lunches at work, and came home at one A.M. exhausted but far too wired to sleep. I would slip into bed around four A.M falling asleep right before my husband got up to start his day. My life was shopping, Starbucks, my job, and eating out most nights that we were home together. We disliked Jay's program, but we accepted that there wasn't much else that would work. Our house was full of stuff, but it wasn't really a home.

When we first bought this house, we figured it would be several years before we would actually move here. I will admit that when Kevin flew out in December to close on the house, I was secretly, or maybe not too secretly jealous of him. He took a video, which was actually dubbed a cross between the Blair Witch Project and a National Geographic special.

We visited Sarah and family over Christmas, used all my vacation days, then I went to Florida again in March. Finally in May, I had enough days left to make it a week in Maine. We came out here in Mid May, no water, no electric, thankfully the weather was good.

I am so thankful that we traded in our middle class, hectic, material focused life for this simple, people based lifestyle. I love that I now bake bread most every week. I have learned to make inexpensive but delicious and nutritious meals for my family. We have met some really great people who "get" why we love it here. After living in the same neighborhood in St. Peters for nearly twenty years, we never once did anything with our neighbors. Here we have made friends. We have both stepped way out of our comfort zones and I would say we have learned to do many things that in the past we would have paid someone else to do for us. Kevin repaired broken windows, hauled water from the spring when the pump failed, and has figured out how to improvise when he needed something to do a job. I have cleaned up and restored cast iron pans that a year ago, I would have tossed out or given away. We tiled a mantle, paneled a wall, wallpapered two rooms. I who used to scream if I saw a bug, have learned to use natural methods to get rid of flies and spiders.We have learned to compost, and build a fire warm enough to make us comfortable. We had mice, now we have two cats. When we walk our land, it is our land, we don't write a monthly mortgage check. We have to think before we buy something, but really, there aren't many stores here anyhow. By the time we locate what we were thinking that we need, we have figured out another solution. I am getting great at shopping in resale, and thrift shops. Kevin substitute teaches to subsidize our income. Jay is getting ready to move into a house with room mates that he actually has something in common with. He will have a day program that will teach him skills and provide him with recreation. We are all happy, and thriving. For that I am very thankful.